PArched above new York City Diner made famous by the Television Seinfeld television program, the Tom’s restaurant, a small research laboratory has become, in an unlikely, crucial way for the understanding of humanity of our changing climate and the universe itself.
Now it is closed by the administration of Donald Trump.
The NASA climate and space monitoring laboratory, called the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), has been housed in six floors of a rented building belonging to Columbia University on the Upper West Side in Manhattan since 1966.
Since then, he has launched the career of a Nobel Prize winnerMissions helped in Venus and Jupiter, cartographed the Milky Way and alerted the world of global heating by creating one of the first Climate models. The climate model ran on an IBM computer, the fastest in the 1970s and therefore Gargantuan he took the whole second floor.
But this legendary story has noted little for the Trump administration, which ends the laboratory lease on May 31, releasing 130 employees to work at home with an uncertain future to come. Donald Trump, who called the “bullshit” of climate science and a “giant hoax” in the past, wants to cut the earth of NASA Scientific budget in two.
“They are trying to kill the messenger with bad news, it’s crazy,” said Dr. James Hansen, known as the godfather of climate science and previously director of Giss for more than 30 years.
The Guardian spoke to Hansen, who wore a trademark Fedora, while he was attached to a plate of eggs and bacon at the Tom restaurant, which is under the office of Giss. The eggs, as well as certain pancakes for your Guardian journalist, were ordered at the request of the manager’s barked: “$ 12 minimum on food! $ 12! Each!”
The restaurant is famous – its neon -lit exterior has regularly appeared on Seinfeld (photos of Jerry, Kramer and Elaine, some signed, adorn the walls inside) and he inspired the song of the 1980s of Suzanne Vega Tom’s dinner And it is the same regularly regularly by tourists as well as by Columbia students, although perhaps less by Giss’s staff.
“Will they destroy this place?” Are they bombing? ” Hansen said on the dismantling of the institution above where we push our food. “This is the approach of Doge (the so-called” Ministry of Elon Musk’s effectiveness “to detonate things, use a chainsaw,” he said. “It is a big mistake because science is not something that you are starting again. You have a lot of knowledge there. “
Hansen gave the congress and the world its first major warning of a climate crisis in 1988, but left Giss in 2013 to express more publicly from the breakdown of the climate. Her latent activism became so concerning NASA that, says Hansen, he sought to set up a camera outside his office to monitor his movements.
Independence and the worthy of Giss allowed him to draw the dangerous heating of our planet, but also stimulated the resentment of senior officials who had long wanted to overwhelm him in the main of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Campus in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“We have survived a situation not supported for decades,” said Hansen. “A little was a question of jealousy, scientists of the thought of the greenery belt:” Why do these guys go to this privileged position? “”
Ironically, for a place that produced the science of the advanced climate for a tiny fraction of the NASA budget, however, it will be ostensibly closed for reasons of efficiency. Last month, the American president signed a executive decree Call on an examination of all rented federal office spaces, especially in cities, to reduce costs.
“In the coming months, employees will be placed on temporary distance work agreements while Nasa Looking for and assesses the options for a new space for the GISS team, “said a spokesperson for NASA.
We do not know where or if, such a space will occur. This decision will probably not even save the federal government – the lease of the year of $ 3 is between Columbia and a different federal agency and cannot be broken early. The researchers, their books and their equipment are packed and deleted so that the American taxpayer can finance an empty building at the top of the New York Upper West Side.
“Ours does not reason why,” said Gavin Schmidt, the current Director of the GISS who noted that the laboratory was only renovated recently at a cost of several million dollars. “It’s frustrating.” The last weeks of NASA time in Armstrong Hall, the name of the Columbia property, have been marked by team nicks with a farewell party planned among past and current employees.
“There are a few bank lips, the contribution of this place to science was enormous and people are emotional about it,” said Schmidt.
“Giss has a unique culture of autonomy, there is a special sauce here which is responsible for really formidable science. Everyone knows why they are here – they could have gone elsewhere, but they remain in an office which is dedicated to the public service. Science for public good is imbued with floors and walls and elevators here. ”
The work will continue for the moment in a different and disparate form. “It’s doable but it’s a disruptive,” said Kate Marvel, climatologist at Giss. “People prefer to do science to think about moving. It is a building full of nerds that like to do science, love to learn new things on our planet. ”
But for how long and where? A better case could be that Giss goes into a kind of hibernation before being resurrected under a future administration. Or this could be an end of an era, an appropriate result in an era of brightness when climate science is torn off websites,, scientists and their work are dropped, vaccines And even weather forecast are suspected eyes and the president can move forward that the Growing seas Will gladly create a new gentle property by the sea.
“I see this as an attack on this administration against climate sciences,” said Bastiaan Van Diedenhoven, a researcher who worked at Giss for 13 years. “We were afraid of something like that because we saw what was going on in other agencies, so obviously Giss is on their list because of the good science of the climate is done. I do not see how it can survive without building. It is really quite devastating.”
After having drawn the best party from his eggs and his bacon, Hansen wandered at the indefinite side door which wins as a starter in Giss, to say hello to those who followed him. Shortly after his first arrival in Columbia, in 1967, the windows on the second floor of the building were broke after the students’ protests burst During the Vietnam War. Today, another type of tumult is in the air – before Hansen can enter, he comes up against a scientist from NASA who is delighted to see him but quickly asks: “Do you have space somewhere where I can work?”
Schmidt said that he was not sure of what comes next, but that he would not want to move to Maryland and that others will feel the same thing. “People have a life, some will just want to go,” he said. “The mission has not changed, however. We hit over our weight for a bunch of people living above a restaurant in New York. We had a good race. But it’s not over yet.”